Thomas decided that now was an excellent time for a cold shower. A very long one.
By 6:00 p.m. they were on their way to the airport. Diane had slept fitfully for almost two hours, then stayed in her room, unwilling to face Thomas until she had sufficiently leashed her emotions. She hadn’t felt at all hungry, hadn’t ventured out to the kitchen to fix herself even a cup of tea. At one point she heard Thomas clattering around out there and soon smelled eggs and sausage cooking—the last of the food in the house. But when he’d tapped lightly on her door and asked if she wanted any, she hadn’t answered him, and he’d eventually gone away.
Neither had spoken since.
She was no longer angry with Thomas, but his rejection hurt terribly. She felt ashamed for having lashed out at him. What had gotten into her? In a way, she supposed, the whole embarrassing scene might be her fault; she’d put him in an awkward position. She hadn’t exactly begged him to sleep with her, but her body, with or without her permission, had been broadcasting seductive signals to him.
As he’d massaged her foot, his palm cupping each ice cube until it slowly melted into the towel beneath her heel, she’d felt heat, not cold, travel through her body. His hands were strong, warm and reassuring. A lover’s hands. She visualized them traveling slowly up her leg, lifting away the hem of her robe, smoothing up her thigh…and touching her.
She’d thought she would evaporate into a puff of frustrated steam when he abruptly stood up from the bed and looked down at her with that stiff British countenance of his. His eyes dark, glistening coldly. No sign of the passion she’d glimpsed, or thought she’d glimpsed, moments earlier when he’d rushed into her bedroom. He’d probably felt compelled to use his employment by the royal household as an excuse for not having sex with her. It was as convenient a way out as any.
Now Diane stared out the car window, pushing the troubling thoughts away as Thomas slowed the Benz to approach an airport gate at the area accommodating smaller, private planes. It was manned by a uniformed guard who waved the vehicle through. The Benz rolled to an effortless stop on a strip of tarmac between a hangar and a sleek silver jet embossed with the crimson emblem representing the monarchy of Elbia. Both metal and asphalt glowed red from the slanting rays of the setting sun. It seemed to her the entire Earth was being consumed by flames, and she with it.
As soon as they stopped, Thomas stepped quickly from the driver’s seat and rounded the car to open her door for her. He took her arm and led her across the ruby-black landing apron toward the plane. Her foot still felt tender, but she could walk on it without real pain. A customs officer was waiting for them. He gave her luggage a cursory check, then stamped her new passport.
Introductions to the pilot and copilot were brief. Thomas showed her to her seat, which was a butter-soft wedge of leather couch, long enough to accommodate two people. She listened halfheartedly to Thomas’s polite offer of a drink or snack, but declined any refreshments with a stiff shake of her head.
He was being nice to her, but she still felt unwanted. Many other men, she suspected, would react exactly as he had, even without an employer’s wrath to worry about. She just wasn’t attractive enough to be worth the effort. Never in her life had she felt so humiliated, so alone and unloved. The ache in her heart was close to unbearable.
As the plane took off with a powerful surge into the oncoming darkness, she gazed out the curved window at a purple-and rose-streaked sky and felt the sting of the day lessen just a little as the jet gained altitude. She decided she would use the flight time to put the pain behind her and look forward to seeing Allison and her little niece and nephew. If she could just focus on the happy things in her life, she would be okay. She would. She really would. To hell with men!
Diane shot a sideways glance at Thomas buckled into a seat across the aisle. He was punching the keys of a laptop computer, hunt-and-peck style, scowling intently at the screen. If he punched any harder, she mused, his index fingers would shoot straight through the machine into his kneecaps. It gave her a small amount of satisfaction to know he was upset, too. Though why he should be, she had no idea. He’d been the one to set the rules.
For the first hour of the flight, Diane pretended to read the paperback novel she’d brought from home. But she became aware of Thomas stealing glances her way, then observing her for longer periods of time, the laptop idle beneath his fingers. At last she closed the book and turned to look at him across the empty expanse of leather between them.
“What is it?” she asked.
His dark eyes glistened solemnly. “I’m sorry,” he said tightly. “I’ve hurt your feelings.”
She lifted her chin with dignified grace. “I’ll survive.”
“I want to make up for it.” He hesitated. “Just tell me what I must do. Please.”
Diane laughed. She couldn’t help it. Suddenly she felt so emotionally drained she was incapable of being anything but absolutely candid about what had happened between them. “I realize I’m not a very glamorous woman,” she began. “But I had hoped that, just once, just—” She looked forward to the half-closed sliding partition that separated the luxurious ten-seat passenger compartment from the cockpit. She could see the back of the pilot’s seat and the glowing dials on the control panel beyond him.
Thomas set the laptop aside, unclasped his seat belt and quickly moved to fully close the door between the cabin and cockpit. Instead of returning to his own seat, he settled on the leather bench beside her, then leaned so close to her she felt his warm breath against her cheek when he spoke. “Go on, they can’t hear now.”
She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to explain herself to the Englishman, of all people. But something inside of her demanded she put into words some of the feelings she’d kept locked away in her heart for so very long. Never had she confided her most intimate secret even to her own sister. And she would never, never reveal that to any man! But perhaps she could reveal a small corner of her heart, to ease her own loneliness.
“It sounds awful,” she began slowly. “I’m not that kind of woman. But I suppose I was hoping for a…um, for a one-night stand.”
Thomas grimaced, looking puzzled. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked. “To get back at your husband for deserting you?”
“No!” She shook her head violently. Revenge wasn’t her way of dealing with people who hurt her. “No,” she repeated more softly. “I guess I just wanted to find out what passion, real passion uncomplicated by other emotions felt like…even if it lasted no longer than a few hours.”
Thomas stared at her, his eyes deepening nearly to black. He raked a hand through the thick, dark-brown hair over his forehead. “That husband of yours was a bloody fool,” he rumbled low in his throat. “A fellow just has to look at you to see you’re more woman than most men could handle.”
Her heart abruptly ceased beating, missed several pulses, then picked up its rhythm double-time. Diane narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious of his unexpected compliment. Or was he just teasing her? “Is this you talking, Thomas…or the result of another directive from Jacob?”
His hand moved so fast she barely saw it and didn’t have a chance to pull away. He seized her arm and gave her a good, hard shake. “Look at this face, woman!” he demanded in a harsh whisper. “Do you see a man blindly following orders?”
She gazed up at him, shaken by the startling change in his manner, searching his tormented features for meaning. A dangerous hunger seethed in his eyes, tugged at the muscles beneath his jaw, sent a shiver of fear through her.
“No.” She choked out the word. “No, not now. I don’t think what Jacob wants is on your mind.”
“Damn right. If I hadn’t believed I was betraying Jacob’s trust,” he hissed at her, “I swear I’d have thrown you down on that bed so fast—”
“You mean I…I excite you?” Diane stared at him, forgetting to be frightened. She was honestly amazed. She felt like a child waking from a dream, unable to differentiate between
the last traces of fantasy and a slowly emerging real world.
“Excite me?” he bellowed. “Woman, you drive me out of my mind and very nearly out of my pants!”
Diane clapped a hand over his mouth, laughing in spite of her embarrassment. “Hush.” She nodded toward the front of the plane. That partition didn’t look nearly solid enough to be soundproof.
He pulled her fingertips from his lips and kissed them softly before folding them within his hand on the cushion between them. His gaze skipped around the plush, mahogany-paneled compartment as if seeking a safer resting place than on any part of her.
At last he met her curious eyes. “From the moment I met you,” he began cautiously, “I wondered how you might look with your clothes off. Does that shock you?”
She quickly shook her head, then grinned. “Maybe a little.”
“I thought about what it would feel like to take you away somewhere. Somewhere we could be alone together, just the two of us. Jacob’s yacht…an island…the chateau I bought two summers ago in Switzerland. After a while, it didn’t matter where. And you can take my word for it, when you crossed my mind it was purely as a woman…and with a great deal of shame and frustration because you were married and had a family. I couldn’t lay a damn finger on you!”
She took a long time to digest his delicious confession. He’d hidden his attraction to her so well, she never would have guessed it existed.
“When you…when you kissed me yesterday,” she began tentatively, then shook her head in frustration because the words came out so awkwardly, “I thought it was because you felt sorry for me.”
He rolled his eyes toward the low ceiling of the compartment. “I kissed you, woman, because I didn’t have the strength not to kiss you.” He spoke slowly, carefully now, as if it was important to him that she understand. Despite his calm exterior, she was aware of enormous tension building within his fingers, hands, traveling up his arms and tightening his shoulders as he reached for and captured her other trembling hand. His gaze locked with hers. “I barely had the self-control to stop at just a kiss. I wanted to ravage you, head-to-toe.”
She blinked twice, three times, her heart racing…ran her tongue between dry lips. No man had ever spoken such words to her. Such amazing words. At last she found the courage to whisper the thought echoing through her heart.
“What?” he asked leaning closer.
This time she didn’t blink. “I said, ‘If it happens again…don’t stop.”’
Thomas swallowed audibly. “You have no idea what you’re asking of me, Diane.” He drew a long, shaky breath, then let it out gradually. For the first time since he’d moved to her side of the plane, he allowed his gaze to drop to the soft swells shaped by her breasts within her striped cotton tunic. His hand strayed upward. With curved knuckles he lightly brushed the side of her left breast, as if he was testing his own willpower as well as her invitation.
“What if Jacob found out?” he breathed, watching his finger trace the outline of her bra through the fabric. “What if I slept with you, but you later regretted it?”
“I wouldn’t tell him, and I would never regret making love with you.” But she immediately wondered if she really knew how she would feel after having sex with a man she barely knew.
“What if you were disappointed?”
She giggled. He was worried about disappointing her? “I would have thought your male ego would have assured you that’s impossible.”
He shook his head. “You’re different from the other women who have passed through my life. Better,” he added hastily, when her expression must have warned him he had crossed an invisible line and was close to upsetting her again. “They all—” he searched for the right words, lifted his hand and pressed his palm tenderly to her cheek “—they were accustomed to playing intimate games with men, without ever becoming truly intimate. I doubt any of my lovers gave one ounce of her soul to me. And I know I never gave mine to them.”
His words were beautiful, but he still hadn’t said they would sleep together. Rejection, even for logical reasons, still felt like rejection. “You’re saying,” she began hesitantly, “that you don’t believe I could make love to a man without falling in love with him?”
Thomas brushed an errant wave of dark hair from over her eyes. “Exactly. And I don’t want to find myself in the position of being the one to hurt you.”
“I’m not like that,” she stated with more confidence than she felt.
“You don’t want a fling,” he insisted. “You need a real man, one who will stand by you. Deep down, Diane, like any good woman…you want forever.”
Her cheeks burning with indignation, she glared at him. A lump threatened to close her throat, but she forced bitter words over it. “What gives you the right to say what I want?” she demanded.
“You’re too nice to—”
Diane huffed at him, pulling away. “I’m too nice to have sex with a man and enjoy it for its own sake? Is that what you’re saying? Too good to have a torrid love affair just for the fun of it?” She glared at him. “Don’t I have a right to even a little happiness after suffering through eight years of a cold, loveless marriage to a man who never once in our relationship made me—” She clamped her mouth shut, appalled by what she’d nearly revealed—the secret that was so mortifying she’d vowed it would remain hers alone.
Thomas studied her for a long moment while she held her breath and itched uncomfortably in her seat, trying to avoid his piercing eyes, praying he hadn’t been able to put the rest of the pieces together on his own. “Your husband never sexually satisfied you?” he asked diplomatically.
“I-I’m not sure.” She slid as far away from him on the seat as possible and looked frantically out the window at the black night sky.
“If you’d been there, dear girl, you would know it,” Thomas stated.
Dear Lord, how would she ever be able to look the man in the eye again? He must think she was ridiculously naive! Probably even stupid. Yet she knew from sad experience that it was possible to go through the motions of the physical act that seemed so exciting and beautiful in novels and movies without feeling anything but frustration. There had been no joy with Gary. No soaring highs and no dazzling fireworks. No passion.
Thomas coughed as much to clear the air, she suspected, as his throat. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t a very tactful thing to say. But it seems to me a bloody shame for a warm, lovely woman like you never to have had an orgasm.”
She shrugged.
“On the other hand,” he continued, still sounding angry, “if no man has ever made love to Diane Fields the right way, it’s her partner’s fault not hers.” His long arm shot out and, despite the increased distance between them, he caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and firmly guided her back to face him.
“Lovely lady, I could show you how it ought to be between a man and a woman. Teaching you would bring me the greatest pleasure.” He stood up in front of her and smiled down softly, the outrage in his voice gone. He looked both intrigued and tempted by the prospect.
“But you can’t…because of your loyalty to Jacob?”
“That’s right.”
Sensing he was about to return to his own seat, she impulsively decided she wasn’t going to let him off that easily.
Diane reached up, gripped one of Thomas’s strong hands and hauled him down beside her. Before he could recover his balance or composure, she quickly placed her arms around his neck, pressing her body against the solid wall of his muscled chest. She tilted her head back and parted her lips, feeling a shudder rip through his body as he sighed and took her mouth with all the hunger of a starving man.
Only then did she move away and settle back into the curve of smooth leather with a satisfied smile.
“I just wanted you to understand what you’d be missing,” she murmured, closing her eyes to enjoy the delicious ripples of heat radiating through her. “I, for one, don’t give a royal hoot what Jacob thinks.”
Diane stood at the window of the spacious bedroom she had been given in the castle. Below stretched a walled garden, its paths outlined in neatly clipped hedges. Roses bloomed in lush abundance, mostly reds and pinks, but a few peach and white blossoms clustered around a stone garden bench. On that bench sat a man with trim, dark hair and a brooding countenance. He looked deeply disturbed by his secret thoughts.
Diane grinned. Good. That kiss over the Atlantic had given Thomas Smythe something to think about.
It wasn’t that she meant to be cruel or a tease, she told herself. She liked him, really she did. But his refusal to give in to the same temptation that was frustrating her…well, that infuriated her.
She sighed and collapsed heavily on the cushioned windowseat. For a long time she had numbed herself to all feelings that might be called sensual, sexy or erotic. There had been so little time for that sort of thing. She’d been far too busy raising her children and running a home and business, and Gary preferred to spend his free time at the local watering hole.
Like a fine piano, neglected and left unplayed for months at a time, she had fallen out of tune with the romantic world. Adorably infatuated couples on TV, daring lovers in movies, stories of reckless passion in books all left her cold. She had no way of identifying with those model-perfect heroes and heroines who experienced life intensely and loved ardently. Did real people ever behave this way—wrapping their naked bodies around each other with moans of delight? Did real men and women suffer unquenchable yearnings for each other? Ford rushing rivers…scale mountains…challenge destiny to be together?
She had stopped believing such love existed until Allison and Jacob were reunited nearly three years after her sister conceived the young prince’s child. Then she saw in their eyes a desire so compelling she couldn’t ignore it. For the only time in her life she envied her sister. No, she didn’t want Jacob. What she coveted was the joy of feeling like a woman, deep in her bones, right down to her soul.
The Earl Takes A Bride (Elbia Series Book 2) Page 5